


tie me to a purer movement

by inkvoices



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Community: be_compromised, F/M, violent imagery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-31
Updated: 2013-07-31
Packaged: 2017-12-22 00:30:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/906783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkvoices/pseuds/inkvoices
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Tie your heart at night to mine, love, and both will defeat the darkness.</i>
</p>
<p>What's between him and Natasha helps him to fight the nightmares and the darkness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	tie me to a purer movement

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lar_laughs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lar_laughs/gifts).



> Written for a prompt from lar_laughs at the be_compromised 2013 promptathon: _Tie your heart at night to mine, love,/ and both will defeat the darkness/ like twin drums beating in the forest/ against the heavy wall of wet leaves_ (poem by Pablo Neruda).

In the night the darkness comes, bringing the terrors and the horrors, creeping under the doors and out from behind the curtains until the lights are switched off and the darkness swallows everything whole. 

He lies still waiting for sleep that will never happen, can never happen, staring up into nothingness, the knowledge that there’s a ceiling above never wiping out the feeling of staring into an abyss. Nothing to do, there are no distractions, nothing but the darkness. Nothing but a blank canvas which all the things behind his eyes can spew out onto.

It isn’t the darkness itself that’s the problem; it’s what the darkness gives life to.

Natasha crawls into bed next to him and moulds her body to his, warm length of her against his side, palm on his chest, and her beating heart so close to his. A steady rhythm of affirmation. He sends Morse code messages back to it, back to her heart, fingers lightly tapping on the soft skin on the underside of her wrist. Messages pressed into the raised veins there, a slight restriction and then not of her blood flow, messages carried along with oxygen and all the vital things a heart needs.

The heat from her hand on his chest sinks down inside him, a palm print hole, and she reaches inside. She reaches into his chest, rips out his arteries, his lifelines, but it’s okay, because her chest is open too and she replaces his with hers. Replaces hers with his.

His fingers fumble at first as they join hers in their work, tying them together, their hearts together, until they’re sharing blood like Siamese twins, two halves of a whole and inseparable. His fingers are inside her, warm and wet, feeling her pulse. 

Her heart beats like drums – not war drums, not a marching band, not the grand timpani of an orchestra. Her heart beats like drums deep in the forest, heard even when wet leaves and wild growth try to muffle the sound. 

The Morse code messages he sent return to him in her blood, to his heart, and he beats them back to her in his. He sends her Morse code, action and pauses that can be transcribed into words. She sends drums, action and pauses in rhythm, in music, a language without words, only feeling.

Fingers and bodies and movement, but their hearts do the work.

He closes his eyes and the projection of his own darkness into the darkness outside stops. He closes his eyes and there’s no room for darkness behind them either. She’s inside him, part of him, lights him up from the inside out. Fireworks and dreams come from her, they dream together, and their dream replies to the darkness, fireworks and light.

Behind his eyelids: white.


End file.
